I think my main issue is that while this is great idealism, it’s fundamentally hypocritical in practice. The fediverse is not a place for everyone when the vast majority of people do not understand how or why to use it. It is not accessible across cultural barriers, and it’s not accessible to those with lower levels of technological literacy.

Bitcoin proponents play the same game about decentralization: centralized industries no longer in control, power to the people, etc. Except instead of just centralized power to a new group, whoever ended up being early adopters.

The fediverse is a small group of technologically literate folks doing the same thing, but with social networks. It’s an (intentional or otherwise) homage to the old web, before Eternal September, which I totally understand the desire for. But it claims to be a new voice of the people, when really it’s just a new platform for the voice of the few. Those fed up with the actual voice of the masses (it turns out most people don’t have much interesting to say, and probably don’t agree with you). It instead replaces the mass of voices with a smaller, pre-filtered set of voices. It is its own echo chamber.

We certainly need viable competition to the massively centralized, corporate controlled internet that we live in today. The fediverse is a good experiment, and quite likely in the right direction. But it’s activists and participants need to a reckon it’s actual nature rather than the idealist model they claim it to be. Right now there’s a whole lot of drinking of the kool aid, which will only be to its detriment long term.

If the fediverse is a universe for everyone, then it should be accessibility über alles